


Choose Me

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Category: South Park
Genre: A Whole Lotta Prose, Beginnings, Drabble Collection, Freeform, M/M, Road Trips, Running Away, South Park Drabble Bomb, Starting Over, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-05 02:49:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11568747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Becoming a runaway was supposed to be exhilarating, and it was, to some degree. It was also sobering, and heartbreaking, and terrifying, too. Escape meant different things to seventeen year old Craig and sixteen year old Kenny, but thankfully, it led them to the same path. With little more than the will to disappear, they built something new from nothing at all. Kenny called it beautiful; Craig called it messy. Admittedly, it was on all accounts nothing but an act of foolish, desperate love.A miniseries based around the prompts for the July 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. Crenny.





	1. Choose Me

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note: This fic was originally created with the intent to be a general compilation of drabbles. I've decided to transform it into its own miniseries, as all of the prompt fills I've done for this month are in the same universe. I'll be making a separate fic to compile drabbles in later. Sorry for any possible confusion! Please enjoy the show!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fill for the prompt "Road Trip" in the July 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. It is rated T for mild violence. Enjoy!

Faded yellow stripes passed like tiny lightning bolts on the driver’s side, and Kenny imagined them to sound like thunder, crackling with each break between them like a rainstorm that the earth around them definitely needed. The grass was dead and the trees were dead, and before jumping into Craig’s shitty Neon with the tires spinning hot underneath them, he was dead too. Not literally, of course, as he’d become accustomed to clarifying, but deep inside his soul, where his spirit was sleeping. He felt dormant, senile and strange, stuck in a town with no future to speak of and a deadbeat family he wanted very much to care about but came just short of doing so.  _ ‘For Karen’ _ had been his mantra for years, but Karen was grown, and not even her doe eyes could stop him from thrusting himself into Craig’s passenger seat, followed by several glass bottles hurled at him from across the lawn. No, those bottles had sealed a fate, one no amount of younger sister tears could change.

“You’re no longer welcome in this house!” he’d been told, the words slurred and raspy from the morning pack of cigarettes smoked through one by one. Good, Kenny thought, and he’d winced while he rolled his window up by the hand crank as hard as possible, just barely missing shattering glass that he feared dented the door.

“Shit, sorry,” he’d said, breathless for reasons he didn’t know, but Craig had already let go of the brakes, and they were squealing away from the shit hole he called home and out of the shit hole called South Park. It wasn’t until the signs for the next town started cropping up and the road became an empty two-lane highway that Craig seemed to relax, his foot feeling like it eased off the gas, just a bit. Until then, they were silent. Kenny eyed the AUX cord, though it didn’t feel right to grasp for it quite yet; not when his heart was still pounding and the blood still rushed hot and angry in his veins.

Craig broke the silence first.

“What you got in the backpack?” His eyes never left the road, his face steely in a way only Craig could pull off. From the side, he looked like a statue, the kind they painted so it looked like it’d been done on paper. He looked like he belonged on an ancient vase or tapestry, strong, sharp features standing out like the characteristics of royalty. Craig was definitely three-dimensional, though, and Kenny proved it by poking at his dark blue hoodie, feeling the cotton under his fingertips and the way Craig flinched at first contact.

“I don’t know,” Kenny answered, and it was partly true. He’d been in a hurry he hadn’t expected. Craig had thrown a rock into his bedroom window.

It was not just a little bit of gravel either, but a rock that belonged in a river, a sizable chunk of half-polished stone that had soared right into the window panes and caused a downpour of thick glass shards. Kenny had jumped to his feet, rushing to the window and ignoring the commotion of his family yelling from downstairs, and he found that in front of his house was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It stood in beaten up sneakers and a ratty old hoodie that he refused to throw away, leaning back against a poorly running old car that he’d bought with his own paychecks off a shady guy online.

“Is this the part where I quote Shakespeare and let down my hair?” Kenny teased, just to catch that tiny quirk of his lips that told him he’d said something legitimately amusing to him, and it materialized instantly.

“I’m choosing now,” Craig said, and though he hadn’t yelled Kenny heard it clear as day, ringing in his ears like musical chimes, like the prettiest promise he’d ever been chosen for. Kenny hadn’t given it a second thought. They’d discussed this before, one late night in Craig’s backyard.  _ “One of these days I’m gonna pick up and high-tail it the fuck outta here, and I’m not gonna look back,” _ he’d promised.

_ “Take me with you?” _ Kenny asked, though it was more of a desperate request than a question. Craig nodded, his profile illuminated by the moonlight.  _ “Just tell me when.” _

_ “I’ll choose a day,” _ Craig said,  _ “and I’ll take you with me.” _

The sun outlined his face instead of the moon this time, on this day that Craig had chosen, and the tingling in Kenny’s stomach was a mixture of excitement and genuine fear. It was a thrill, he supposed, and he decided he quite liked the way thrills felt. He’d half expected Craig to forget about him, to leave town and never look back and disconnect his phone number so that Kenny would be left forever wondering if he was alive, or if he missed him.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Kenny asked, eyeing the sign that told him Denver was 92 miles away. It whizzed passed them, the way everything was lost to the wind that whipped around their car like it was invincible.

Craig never replied, so Kenny took the AUX cord. 


	2. Change in Tides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part two of the Crenny miniseries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fill for the prompt "Beach" for the July 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. Enjoy!

“I don’t think I’ve actually ever been to a real one. A beach, I mean,” Kenny said, staring down into damp sand that squished under his sneaker. Craig hummed, low and wobbly, and kicked his way through the ground still untouched by the surf. It scattered with the sound of a rainmaker, a distinct sound that only sand made.

Craig had turned left. Kenny hadn’t noticed when, but it had to be some point after he’d fallen asleep in the passenger seat, a conscious decision that he’d hoped would clear the anxiety buzzing in his chest. Craig had turned left, and suddenly they weren’t heading north for Denver but heading west for San Francisco. Kenny had pretended not to notice.

Most of the daylight had abandoned them by the time they rolled up to the nearest empty shoreline. Craig had never left the wheel, insisting on making the entire drive. Kenny thought maybe he just wanted something to stop him from thinking too much about what he’d just done. His phone wouldn’t stop vibrating, so he’d asked Kenny to turn it off. Kenny’s went off once; Stan asked about the English homework due Monday.

“When have you?” Kenny asked, finally looking up from his dirty shoes. Craig stared straight ahead, stony and tired.

“When I was eleven. We came here for a vacation. I was miserable. I had the flu or something.” He sniffled, like the memory was so strong its symptoms had rematerialized. He took a deep breath in and smelled the salt and grime of the sea.

The seafoam touched the soles of his shoes, dangerously close to overwhelming them and soaking his socks. With a smirk, he said, “You know this is like, an actual long walk on the beach, right?” Craig finally looked at him, really looked at him, so Kenny could see the way his eyelids twitched when he looked at him in feigned exasperation.

“Do we have to do a candlelight dinner next?” Craig droned, and Kenny snorted, laughter bubbling from his throat like it was releasing the negative thoughts that had built up in his lungs since they’d left South Park’s town limits. He reached out to touch Craig’s arm, to prove him and this moment real again. His fingers wrapped around it, like they belonged against his forearm, and when he didn’t pull away, Kenny slipped them carefully down his jacket to meet his longer, knobbier hand. Craig flinched then, but only for a moment. Then he clasped Kenny’s fingers so tightly he felt his joints ache.

“Craig?” Kenny spoke but it felt like it was through plastic, and he feared his words would never get through. His ribs felt as though they were collapsing against his lungs with each shallow breath he took. Gravity weighed him down until he felt like he sank deeper into the watery earth, and upon looking down, he realized the ocean had indeed crept far enough that he had actually sunk in a little deeper, closer to Hell. Sand was dangerously close to filling his shoes. He gulped down the lump in his throat that he hadn’t noticed before. This thrill wasn’t fun anymore, like it had been hundreds of miles east from here. He didn’t want this. “Where are we going?”

They stopped walking but Kenny hardly noticed, instead swept up in the way Craig turned to face him directly. The sun left a golden glow on the tips of his lashes, where it set fire to his eyes so that they seared Kenny’s heart, branding it. Everything about him was sapphire. “Nowhere, for now,” he finally answered, his lips barely parting to allow the words to flow from them, and they spilled like oil at Kenny’s feet. Though he knew it should fill him with dread, the uncertainty of it all, it did no such thing. Instead, gravity lessened, Craig’s hold on his hand began to soften, and his eyes grew tranquil once more, the flames lessening to dull, smoldering coals. God, he was so in love with those eyes that he _ran away from home for them_. The absurdity of it made him want to laugh.

Kenny shivered at a gust of wind that raised goose bumps on his arms, and with it came the lapping of the sea over Craig’s shoes too. Now they’d both been touched, christened by the Pacific, and everything felt different. He hurried to start taking off his sneakers.

“What are you doing?” Craig asked, but he didn’t answer, just focused on peeling his wet socks from his chilled feet after wrenching the shoes from them first. He stuck the soiled socks inside them and picked them up by the back of their heels, and turned away from Craig to take two steps into the sea.

The water was freezing at first, and he had to resist the urge to hop out of it as soon as he’d stepped in, but he let it numb his toes because it _meant_ something now, even if he didn’t know what it meant exactly. He closed his eyes and lifted his chin, letting the wind mold into the shape of his body and listening to the slapping of water on the rocks. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there. He didn’t open his eyes again until he became distinctly aware of a towering man standing directly beside him.

He looked up and then down, and with a rush of fondness that warmed his frozen fingers and toes, he saw Craig’s bare feet dig into the sand beside him, his sneakers held the same way in his other hand. He’d extended the free one beside him, palm up, waiting. Kenny looked at his own feet, curled his toes in and out so that they nearly disappeared under the soupy sand, and grabbed his hand with a smile he felt in every inch of himself. Their fingers interlocked and Kenny squeezed them this time, and together, they let their feet get swallowed by the ocean and its fine grains of salt and earth.

They returned to the car some time after that, though Kenny didn’t know when exactly; Craig’s car’s clock was broken. They quietly rolled it between trees in a nearby park, and leaned the seats down to rest. When nothing but the stars were left, Kenny touched Craig’s face, and it was smooth and cold under his fingertips. Kenny only really saw emotions in his eyes when lit by the cosmos, and there was a lot of uncertainty he wished he could kiss away.

Moments before drifting to sleep, facing each other with their hands loosely clasped, Kenny’s phone went off, illuminating the whole passenger side of the car. He hesitated before reaching for it, but unlocked it anyway. There was one new text message.

_When are you coming home?_

Karen was the last person on Earth he wanted to tell that answer to, and so he pressed and held the off button, watching his phone blink out of existence the way he prayed he would do the same in their memories.

The next day, Craig and Kenny got new phone numbers.


	3. Watching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for the prompt "Fireworks" for the July 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. The boys are around 15 years old here. Enjoy!

Watching was one of Craig’s favorite pastimes. It had been that way since the very beginning of his childhood, quietly noticing ants march past his shoelaces and other kids splash in the puddles their parents scolded them for jumping into. He watched his friends closest of all, and they were nice to notice even if they weren’t nice things. He watched Clyde’s ears turn red every time he was embarrassed, which he managed quite a lot. He watched Token bite at his nails before a test, a nervous habit he’d never managed to break all the way until the day Craig left him behind. He watched the way Tweek’s eyes went vacant whenever his anxiety became too much to bear and he began to fight it within himself instead of out loud, when he was his most terrified. He liked to feel as though he knew them well, and knew little things they perhaps didn’t even know about themselves.

The problem with watching was that sometimes he had to watch things that he did not want to see. He watched two adults argue in a front lawn on his way home from school one afternoon, when he was eleven. Their voices had silenced immediately upon noticing his presence. Their eyes followed him like monsters that thirsted for his blood. He took off running as soon as he felt like he could outrun them should they try anything. He didn’t hear following footfalls, but he did hear more yelling.

Then he started watching Kenny.

He hadn’t really noticed him much at first. He knew he hung out with Stan, Kyle, and Eric Cartman. He knew he didn’t talk much, and he didn’t like to show his face; for what reason, he could never figure out. He knew they were in the same American history class in seventh grade. It wasn’t until after that year that he began to watch Kenny instead of know, and only Craig knew that watching was much more intimate than knowing.

He watched Kenny scribble in the corners of his desks, and he tried every day in the classes without him to find the one with his ever-present initials carved into it where his elbow rested, by the hinge. He had one desk marked in every classroom, and somehow, he always knew which one was his. He dealt with the fact that Kenny only branded right-handed desks but he was left-handed. It made his arm sore sometimes, but there was safety in a sharply written _KM_ underneath his sleeve, and it was more than worth the trouble.

He watched the way he handed off lunch to his sister somedays, and how he held onto his stomach for the rest of lunch period after that. Craig watched him walk a little slower some mornings than others, looking run down and a little beat up. He saw him wince when he bumped into things sometimes. He guessed there were bruises under the fabric of his clothes. He hated watching people hurt.

He tried going back to normal, watching Token’s nails shorten and Jimmy’s braces change colors, but all he could watch anymore was Kenny, and it frustrated him beyond belief. He didn’t want to watch Kenny anymore. It made his chest ache in a way he didn’t like at all.

Sparklers were not the most exciting form of a firework they could get their hands on, but in the heavy twilight of the Fourth of July, in the junkyard that was Kenny’s backyard, they were exactly what they needed. Kenny ran across the yard with one thrusted in front of him, all giggles and sweetness and life, and Craig thought he looked like a moth dancing around his own flame, wings fuzzy and flared behind his back.

“C’mon, get one too! I wanna pretend we’re wizards,” Kenny yelled to him from across the lawn, and Craig huffed.

“Wizards are lame,” he called back, but he reached for the box anyway, and lit one with the discarded lighter Kenny kept on him at all times. Tiny sparks shot from its tip, a miniature firework that felt powerful when in the palm of his own hand. Kenny dashed forward and Craig saw the teeth of his smile in the glow of the sparkler in his hand. As soon as he reached Craig, his own stick fizzled out, and his face went dark.

“Aww,” Kenny whined. Craig lifted his to illuminate his disappointed face. Then, the sound of a crash, and that horrible yelling, made his head shoot up to stare directly into his back window. The fear in his eyes was painful in the light of something so pretty. Craig hated watching that face most of all. Kenny’s face was made for smiling.

So, without a second thought, he took Kenny’s dead sparkler and replaced it with his own, a few dashes of light hopping from it with each jostle as their hands exchanged. “It’s okay,” Craig murmured, even though he knew it wasn’t. Kenny’s stare was broken, and his wide eyes came down from the window to stare directly into Craig’s, and it felt invasive, intimate, intense. The light that flickered between them was inconsistent, and Craig only saw flashes of Kenny’s face, getting closer and more afraid all the way until it was too close to see and the world went black because his eyes always slid shut when he was kissed. He wished he’d kept his eyes open though, because he wanted to know if Kenny’s eyes were just as frightened as his heart felt, his pulse so rapid his chest felt close to bursting. He opened his eyes first to find that Kenny’s were closed too, and a rush of desperate need consumed him so much that Kenny’s sparkler dropped to the dirt and Craig’s hand took grip in Kenny’s hair. He kissed him back so hard it hurt his lips, but he didn’t care. Kenny made his heart hurt so much sometimes, and it made sense to match.

They didn’t do any more than press their lips together, and Craig suspected it was because they were both too afraid to do anything else. It was still overwhelming, and as soon as he came to his senses, he broke contact with a sharp gasp, and stumbled back down to his knees. He looked up at Kenny, who had the rawest emotion Craig had ever seen spelled plainly across his face, and the second sparkler died, leaving them both in the dark. Glass broke in the house behind them.

Craig never knew what that emotion was on Kenny’s face, that Fourth of July in the summer before sophomore year. He didn’t see it again until two years later at a rest stop in Utah, counting the cash they had on hand that would have to last them for an indefinite period of time. He wondered if the emotion was genuine fear, the kind Kenny didn’t want anyone to see. If that was the case, he was honored to be the one to see it, and heartbroken to know that it had been him to evoke it, both times.

They didn’t say I love you much, but it felt right to tell him so at that rest stop in Utah. Kenny’s fear melted into a grateful smile so powerful it nearly brought tears to his eyes, bright as the sparklers that first brought their lips together. Watching Kenny hurt in an entirely new way now, one that he didn’t hate, maybe even loved, but that left him aching all the same. “Let’s go to the beach,” he suggested, and Kenny nodded, and the hesitant happiness in the biting of his lip made his heart burst into flames.


	4. Remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the fill for the prompt "Park" from the July 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb, and the 4th installation of this miniseries. Enjoy!

“When was the last time you were here?”

Kenny’s voice was deafening in the humid summer heat, cutting through every molecule that hung heavy between them and startling Craig from the clouds in his own head. “You mean right here, or home?”

Kenny shrugged. “Either one. Whichever one feels right to answer.”

He hated when he spoke in riddles, sometimes. “I haven’t seen this park in probably a decade.” He leaned into the chains of the swing he’d eased into ten minutes ago, the cold metal biting his forehead. He barely fit into its seat anymore. Kenny had jumped into his with no hesitation, not at all like Craig had gingerly positioned himself between the handles, like he feared he’d forgotten how. “Home though,” he said, huffing quietly to himself at what was so obviously a joke that didn’t quite deserve a laugh, “I don’t remember the last time this place was home.”

“Yeah,” Kenny agreed, his voice lilting and free, “me neither.” He didn’t sound remorseful, and Craig had to admit he didn’t feel horribly guilty for it either. Skipping town had been the best thing that ever happened to him.

Kenny had requested that after his twenty-first birthday, they come to South Park. He refused to call it home, instead referring to it only by its name printed on maps and occasionally on the weather channel. When they ran at seventeen, an impulse fueled by the stagnancy of summer, they left their previous definitions of home in the dust, dropped like all the other baggage discarded on their doorsteps. Kenny had his backpack and Craig had his duffel bag, and it was enough.

In some ways, Craig envied the way that Kenny ran away. The yelling and crashing bottles and crying were noisy and flashy and felt like closure. Kenny hadn’t been there for Craig’s escape, which was nothing like his at all. He slipped through the screen door and shut it while holding the handle so it would click as silently as possible. It was quiet as a mouse, and so horribly lonely. He hadn’t intended to leave a note, but in the last few minutes spent in the foyer while he tied his sneakers, he thought to leave his scratchy penmanship on an old post-it. It read  _ ‘thanks for everything. Don’t look for me,’ _ and he stared at it for two full minutes before setting it on the kitchen table because the part that hurt the worst was that his family had never done wrong by him in the first place. It hurt that he was still thankful.

Craig envied Kenny because his family did everything right and he  _ still  _ abandoned them, and he did so in a way that was the most cowardly of all; in the early morning on a Saturday, before the first coffee pot was brewed and first eyes opened.

Sometimes Craig felt like he’d left his family behind simply because he was bored, and he was supposed to be disgusted with that.

“I was here a couple days before you got me,” Kenny said, and he spun on his toes slowly to twist the swing on itself in a clanging braid. Craig rocked back and forth on his rubber soles and a bead of sweat dripped slowly to the collar of his shirt. “Karen wanted to take pictures of the wildflowers.” Kenny’s eyes never left the dirt as he lifted both legs from it to let the swing untwist, spinning him in a lazy circle that Craig vacantly watched. When it slowed to a crawl, he stuck his heels back out, halting like a photograph.

“D’you think Karen’s outta there now?” Kenny asked, and when he looked up Craig saw unchecked worry and pain in his eyes. He thought of Ruby now too, and though he’d never been as close to her as Kenny had been to Karen, his gut twisted all the same.

“I don’t know,” he answered, because Kenny didn’t like pity-lies or lies at all. They’d had a lot of time to understand each other, learn from each other. Kenny always forgot to put his toothbrush away and left it on the side of the sink. He left dishes in the sink so long that Craig washed them before he could ever get to them, even though he always insisted he intended to do them eventually. He left his socks all bunched up when he threw them in the laundry basket. He still kept a family photo in his wallet.

“Aw come on, you always know everything,” Kenny teased, a weak smile revealing crooked teeth and a lack of confidence.

“We can find out,” Craig said, shrugging, “it’s only five minutes from here.”

Kenny got impossibly pale, then, under Craig’s careful scrutiny, and his mouth fell just slightly open, the way it did when he was truly caught off guard. It shouldn’t have caught him off guard, though, because the suggestion was not horribly unfounded or unrealistic. Craig could tell, in the whites of his widened eyes, that Kenny did not under any circumstances want to walk to his old home.

“You don’t want to know, do you?” Craig asked. Kenny stilled, his heels digging into the dirt and his eyes transfixed on his beaten-up shoes. They were silent for a while. Craig never took his eyes off him, watching him stare and stare as though he might will his heartache to go away, like he could banish it with enough concentration. Craig knew the answer. He just wondered if Kenny would admit it out loud this time.

“I think about her the most,” Kenny murmured, “how she’s doing, if she has a boyfriend. If she’s going to college in the fall.” He lit a cigarette that he pulled from his jacket pocket and silently smoked it alone, knowing Craig would take one if he wanted one. He breathed the smoke like a dragon with a swan’s neck, his adam’s apple protruding garishly with how high he tilted his chin. 

“I think it’s my mom, for me,” Craig answered honestly, picking at the tattered sleeves of his old jacket and remembering clearly the way she used to scold him for doing so. He wondered if she ever got her watercolor lessons off the ground. If she missed him. 

He missed her. She always put her hand on the back of Craig’s head when they hugged, a gentle hold that felt protective and warm and so distinctly his mother’s mannerism that it could be no one else. He missed the way she pet his hair sometimes, like that.

“D’you ever think we made a mistake? The way we did it?” Kenny asked, and Craig thought back to the first few months that they lived out of his shitty old car in California. He recalled when they got their first jobs in Washington and saved enough for a down payment on a tiny, broken down apartment deep in Seattle. He remembered the sunrises in Utah where they had their first full kitchen. They’d grown up in each other’s frightened arms, sometime between the first chilly night in the backseat near San Francisco and when they woke up early twelve hours ago to drive to this old park they never cared about as kids.

“Nope,” he finally answered, and he extended a hand for Kenny to take. They meandered back to Kenny’s Mustang, a fixer-upper courtesy of his job at the auto shop, and drove to the motel on the outskirts of town. They could see the roofs of both their families’ houses from the balcony.


	5. Drive Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! This fills the prompt for 'Festival' for the South Park Drabble Bomb, and is the last piece of the puzzle. It's the longest one yet, I think, so I hope you enjoy.

Coming here had been a mistake. Craig knew it, had known since they stepped out of the car and into the nearly full parking lot ten blocks away. Had known it since he got a sinking feeling in his gut with no apparent explanation. Now he knew it was an omen. It was a warning he hadn’t heeded. Craig was not a superstitious person, but he should have taken that flip of his stomach at the sight of the crowd seriously. Now he was stuck here, in this moment, only vaguely aware of Kenny to his side, and all too aware of the girl in front of him with her strawberry blonde hair in a ponytail high on her head, tied with rainbow ribbons. The last time Craig saw her, it was in low pigtails that bounced on her shoulders. 

“I, uh,” she stuttered, her voice weak, and Craig’s chest constricted because minutes ago she’d been proudly spewing the rhetoric of her cause to passersby. All her confidence had left her at first sight, in a plume of invisible energy that spilled from her like the blood drained from her face, and her hands dropped to her sides, threatening to lose the fliers clenched in her fists. The papers were trembling in her grip, and she looked dangerously close to falling into tears right then, before he’d even spoken. “...Craig?” she whispered, and it was a wonder he’d heard her at all over the volume of the crowd around them. He’d forgotten them though, forgotten everything, and all he could remember was the way she’d wished him goodnight the evening before he left her behind, in all its unremarkable glory.

“Hi, Ruby,” he settled for, after thinking of nothing better to say, and her tears spilled over immediately upon hearing the softness in his voice. She put her fliers down on the table behind her so that she could cover her mouth, a sob cracking Craig’s ribs as it rattled from her chest. The other people at her booth looked to her in surprise, but she shook her head at them, and she motioned for him to follow her behind the tent. He was startled by the feeling of Kenny’s hand brushing his and clasping it, and he squeezed it back so tightly he felt his bones creak.

As soon as they were relatively out of sight, she shoved him in the chest. “The fuck-”

“Why.” She didn’t say it like a question, more like a demand, and he imagined her tears to be so hot from the anger in her eyes they might evaporate.

“I don’t-”

“Don’t you  _ dare,” _ she seethed, “say ‘I don’t know.’” He wasn’t sure if Kenny was intentionally backing off, but he wished he’d come and save him, just this once. It was his fault they were even there. The least he could do is take the hit, give him an escape route,  _ something _ .

“Ruby, look, I-”

“No,  _ you _ look!” she cried, shrilly, and Craig determined that she didn’t really want him to answer her at all. “I just-” her voice cracked and her shoulders slumped, the defeat in her eyes so painful he wished for just a moment he could go back in time and warn her of the flash decision he was about to make. “I hate you, you know.”

Craig swallowed, the motion so mechanical and awkward he nearly choked. The thickness in his throat, conjured by the unbridled emotion in his sister’s eyes, wouldn’t go away. “I deserve that,” he said slowly.

“Fucking yes you deserve that!” she said, and she ran her hands down her face and closed her eyes while she took several calming breaths. He took the chance to glance at Kenny, who was looking on with something somber in his expression. At the same time, he was encouraging, the twitch in his lip a sign in tension but the urgency in his eyes a silent demand to do something. God, how he wished they could have run into Karen. Karen would have welcomed Kenny back with open arms. Then again, he hadn’t seen her in five years, and she could have grown up into an entirely different woman since then.

“Where did you go?” she asked, and oh, the list was so long.

“The beach,” he said, to start from the beginning. The frustration in her growl reminded him so much of growing up that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or to cry. He desperately did not want to cry.

“And you took him with you?” Ruby said, pointing at Kenny, and it occurred to Craig for the first time that there was no way that she or any of his family would have known that he’d run with somebody. Their first clue would have been the commotion in Kenny’s front yard, long after he’d already gone.

“Ruby, I-”

“Karen never really got over you,” she spat, and Kenny’s attention snapped to her so fast he nearly heard his neck crack. “You know you broke her heart, right?”

Kenny faltered. He wasn’t supposed to falter. “Hey, back off,” Craig snarled, because Kenny didn’t need to get dragged into whatever this tense joke of a sibling reunion was supposed to be.

Ruby did, and she was quiet for a moment while her tears slowed, her occasional sniffles and wiping her hand across her cheeks the only interruption in the tiny bubble that surrounded the three of them. He’d been complaining about the crowds, but now Craig would kill to be lost in one, riding a wave of anonymity.

“Hold on, here,” Ruby heaved through a shaky sigh, and she picked up a flier from her booth to shove into Craig’s hands. He accepted it and skimmed as she spoke. “This is what I’ve been doing. This is- Craig, this is why I thought you left. Why we all thought you left.”

In his hands was an infographic on homeless LGBT youth.

“You thought I ran because I was gay?” he wanted to laugh, the idea so preposterous, but it was better than the actual one. He was tempted to lie, to say that he’d left tragically, fearing the backlash of homosexuality in a small homophobic town. He hadn’t, though. He’d just felt stifled, and stupid, and driven so dramatically on the impulse to protect Kenny that leaving seemed like the best option. Maybe it had been, for Kenny, but he could have lived out the rest of his teenage years bored and normal, back in his bedroom, where he wondered if his bed and posters remained. If he hadn’t fallen so foolishly in love, maybe his desire to grab him by the hand and rescue him from his home life wouldn’t have led him to this moment. Maybe it wouldn’t have been the last straw that put his old car in drive and pointed the compass toward the Pacific.

“We didn’t have much to go on,” Ruby mumbled, and she looked so confused and sad that Craig felt overwhelmed with the want to hug her, and so he did. He took two large steps forward to wrap his arms around her shoulders, and while she initially put her hands on his chest to push him away, she started to cry again, and her hands clung desperately to the back of his t-shirt while she wetted the front. “Why,” she repeated, “what the hell is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” Craig said, and then, “I’m sorry.”

He hadn’t realized how sorry he was until he said the words. He hugged her tighter, whispered them over and over into her ponytail while she shook and scolded him through messy tears. “Mom has all your old art projects all over the house,” she hiccuped. “I hate them. I hate all of them.”

“Yeah, I probably do too,” Craig muttered, and Ruby laughed weakly, but it was such a relief to have heard at all that he laughed too. She pulled back first, looking over Craig’s shoulder, and he turned around to find Kenny leaning back against a pole of the tent, staring down into his phone. He felt a little guilty, but Ruby reached around him to snag him by the sleeve, and with a yelp, she dragged him into a hug too.

“You’ve been together all this time, right?” she sniffled, and Kenny smiled warmly, nodding. Pride shot through him. “Then you’re part of this fucked up family reunion too. Karen’s not gonna believe this, oh God.” Craig watched Kenny stiffen. He put his arms around both of them to release the tension.

After a brief explanation to the supervisors of the booth, Ruby got herself off the hook, and they went to the greasiest, cheapest diner they could find that wasn’t littered with rainbows. Catching up was awkward at first, but eventually, their conversation began to break down into the way it once was, full of insults and aggression that was anything but serious. He watched her hands as she spoke, noting their inelegant waving and the way she’d painted her nails in rainbow colors, and for the second time, Craig thought he might cry. He felt like he’d never loved her so much as he did now.

“So regardless of what you say, I’m telling Karen,” Ruby scolded, and Kenny nodded wordlessly, knowing full well he would lose in a battle with her. He hadn’t thought he’d want to see his family ever again, for the shame that he felt for running, but with his sister sitting across from him, holding his hand on the table while Kenny held his other in his lap, it was painfully obvious how much he’d actually wanted to. If he hadn’t run into her, though, he doubted he would have gotten the chance.

They missed the entire parade holed up in that little diner on the outskirts of Denver. She was going to community college for two years, then transferring to a private school to finish out a vet tech degree. He felt so proud, but still so ashamed, and she placed her other hand on top of their already clasped ones to still his subtle shaking. He’d told himself for years he didn’t want this, but how wrong he had been. How horribly wrong he’d been to think he really wanted to leave her, leave all of them behind forever.

She gave him her phone number and his parents’ apparently new address, when they had to leave. They’d moved to Aurora. “You don’t have to text me,” she said, her smile raw and hard to look at, “you don’t have to. I just want you to have it. In case you want it later. I love you.” At the confession, she began to cry again, and he hugged her all over again.

“You never did anything wrong,” he whispered, squeezing her tighter, “I was an idiot. I’m sorry.” He leaned in closer to her ear, to try to guard Kenny from hearing him, when he said, “Give Karen his number for me. Please.” When they pulled apart, she nodded. She gave Kenny a hug too, which he happily returned, and he ruffled up her hair, much to her protest. Going their separate ways at the dismantled festival grounds felt like leaving all over again, and Kenny had to practically hold him up while he walked away. He could tell Kenny was missing his sister again, the pain renewed by Craig’s own reunion. He hoped Ruby would obey his wishes.

When they got to the car, he typed her number into a new contact. He wrote  _ Drive safe, _ and it felt so mundane and yet so heavy and meaningful that he couldn’t help the couple of sniffles that betrayed him and his want not to cry. God, he didn’t want to cry, but he did so anyway, and Kenny held his hand on his back in comfort as he leaned over his steering wheel. He tried hard not to let out the ugly gasping breaths he was prone to, because he’d never learned how to properly cry. It was always a mess. Kenny leaned on his side and wrapped both arms around him sideways. He coughed away the lump in his throat and wiped his face on his sleeve. Neither of them said a word.

Halfway through the drive home, Kenny’s phone lit up. Craig watched him lazily unlock it in his peripheral view. He stared at his screen, silent for several seconds where even the music had paused between tracks. “Craig,” he murmured, the tone of his voice strained and serious and intense, and Craig reached across the center console to place his hand on his thigh, to say _ ‘I know.’ _

He didn’t take his eyes off his constantly reigniting phone screen for the rest of the drive. Craig knew then, inherently, more than any moment since hopping in his car that Saturday morning five years ago, that everything would be okay. That they were okay.

Okay was all they ever needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and sticking with me on this haphazard journey, haha! I will probably be going through to edit some things now that I've technically met my deadlines. See you soon!


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